Chapter 321: Indiscriminate Firing
Wang An swallowed hard, his mind racing as he constantly thought of countermeasures.
Unfortunately, given the current situation—his side in the open and the opponent in the shadows—any countermeasure was completely useless.
Mu Xueli and Wang Li noticed Wang An's odd behavior and exchanged a glance, equally confused, but they didn't ask.
After cutting up the hearts, livers, and lungs of many wild boars, the two had already begun feeding the dogs.
Looking at the dogs, Wang An's eyes suddenly lit up; the dogs could be used to flush the opponent out.
However, he immediately dismissed the idea. A wild boar's nose was impressive enough to smell a specific scent from 200 meters away, but a dog's nose wasn't even as good as a boar's.
While the two were feeding the dogs, Wang An said to them, "I'm going to tell you two something. Once you hear it, don't freak out. Just keep doing what you're doing, alright?"
After they nodded, Wang An told them everything about the footprints he had discovered, as well as his suspicions and guesses.
Finally, Wang An asked them, "Given the situation, tell me, what do you think we should do?"
The reason Wang An chose to let them know was that he worried they wouldn't know how to react if a sudden incident occurred.
Furthermore, more people didn't just mean more strength, but more ideas. Wang An wanted to hear their thoughts.
Sure enough, after Wang An finished speaking, Mu Xueli said, "Brother-in-law, why don't we just fire a few shots toward that forest first? Don't you always say that whenever something happens, we should just blast away for a bit and figure things out after?"
Hearing this, a smile touched the corners of Wang An's mouth. Ever since Mu Xueli had killed someone and drunk the bile of a leopard, her ferocity had grown significantly.
At the very least, aside from being afraid of Wang An, she no longer had that "cowardly, pathetic look" when dealing with outsiders.
In Wang An's view, this was a very positive transformation.
In his philosophy, as a man, even if one couldn't be overwhelmingly dominant, one had to possess the conviction to risk one's life.
Hearing this, Wang Li added, "Yeah, Fourth Brother. Beating the grass to scare the rabbits—even if we don't hit them, they'll still be scared."
After Wang Li spoke, Wang An felt even more gratified. Although Wang Li's personality had never been cowardly and he had always been passionate, it had to be admitted that Wang Li was too young and lacked life experience.
Often, it wasn't that Wang Li's brain didn't work, but that his thinking wasn't thorough enough.
Regardless, these two younger brothers were indeed growing in all aspects and developing in a positive direction! That was enough.
Wang An thought about it and felt this method was simple and effective; it only wasted a bit of ammunition.
But bullets weren't expensive; he could waste them however he liked. There was absolutely no problem with that.
Thus, Wang An said, "Alright, let's finish feeding the dogs first while keeping an eye on that area. Once the dogs are fed, we'll blast them a bit first."
After speaking, Wang An joined the two in their chores.
Since they hadn't used the dogs at all since entering the mountains today, Wang An hadn't had the chance to observe the state of the four spotted dogs.
Actually, Wang An really wanted to know if these four spotted dogs had made any progress.
He hoped they wouldn't be like last time—lacking the courage to fight, afraid to eat leopard meat, and most crucially, pissing and shitting themselves in fear before anything had even happened.
If these four spotted dogs were still that useless, Wang An would abandon them without hesitation.
He would give them away to others. Although they would certainly be slaughtered for meat after being given away, that was just how this era worked; who had enough grain to raise a few useless dogs?
As a mountain hunter, Wang An had no taboo against eating dog meat, but if it meant killing dogs he had raised himself, despite his ruthlessness, he had to admit he couldn't do it.
After the three finished feeding the dogs, they raised their guns to their faces and began indiscriminate firing toward the dense forest where the footprints were.
The sounds of "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"... "Bang bang!" once again echoed chaotically through the depths of the mountains.
The three of them fired with absolutely no pattern; after firing one shot, none of them knew where the next one would go.
Basically, if a spot looked suspicious, they fired a shot; if a thicket looked like someone was hiding in it, they fired a shot.
In the dense forest where the three could not see, two people were lying flat on the snow like turtles, feeling utterly stifled.
It had to be said that these two were lying very still—practically motionless.
Looking closely, one could see that one of their arms was bleeding, though it was unclear which of Wang An's group had done it.
Finally, after all 30 rounds from the three guns were exhausted, Wang An and the others stopped their random firing.
The two people lying on the snow finally dared to raise their heads.
The one with the injured arm cursed, "Fuck, if we had brought long guns, those three mountain-hunting bastards would be dead by now! Now look at this—I got bitten by a bullet. You okay?"
The other person replied, "I'm fine. Why don't we hurry up and retreat? I feel like those three bastards are even more ruthless than our lot."
The injured man replied, "Yeah, those dog-bastards seem to be reloading. Let's get out of here quickly before we can't leave."
As they spoke, they stood up and ran toward the other side with their backs hunched, not even daring to retrieve a pair of binoculars dropped nearby.
On the right side of their lower backs, their cotton coats were visibly bulging. If he guessed correctly, there were two handguns beneath those bulges.
It was clear that, as Wang An suspected, if they had brought long guns, they would have killed Wang An's group long ago.
Just as the two left, Wang An's group began another round of random firing.
The two who had already run far away looked at each other with bitter smiles, yet felt a sense of relief as if they had survived a disaster.
Then, they continued running into the distance.
After the second round of thirty bullets was spent, Wang An pressed more rounds into the chamber and said to Mu Xueli and Wang Li
"I'll go take a look. You two cover me with your guns."
"I'll go, Fourth Brother."
"Brother-in-law, I'll go."
Mu Xueli and Wang Li spoke almost simultaneously, their tones very firm.
Undoubtedly, whoever went would be in danger; after all, long-distance shooting and close-quarters combat were entirely different concepts.
After speaking, the two froze, seemingly surprised that the other would volunteer.
Then, Mu Xueli gave Wang Li a disdainful glance and said dismissively
"You're the younger brother, just stay put and be quiet. Why do you have to stick your nose into everything?"
Wang Li, naturally unconvinced, argued back, "You're only a bit older than me. I'm taller than you, and besides, I don't even have to close my eyes when I fire."
Wang Li was telling the truth; none of the young men in Wang An's group were short. In fact, none of the men in the Wang family were short.
Wang An was currently about 183 or 184 cm. Wang Li had grown a lot in the past few months and was at least 180 cm. While Mu Xueli wasn't small, she topped out at around 176 or 177 cm.
Wang An was gratified to see this scene, but for him, it was enough that they had the thought; letting either of them go was out of the question.